History of Nuo: an Overview

Nuo is a complex of religious beliefs and practices prevailing mainly in ethnic minority areas in today's southwest China. Originally derived from a form of exorcism more than 2,000 years ago, nuo was once the prevailing religion in central China until strict enforcement of the official Confucianism ideology during the Ming (1368–1644 AD) and Qing (1644–1911 AD) dynasties drove it into eventual decline. Nuo survived, however, having been brought out of central China by Han immigrants who eventually settled in ethnic minority areas in south-west China, where the popular religion has been gradually integrated into, and been influenced by, the local culture. In north-east Guizhou, for example, nuo has been progressively re-invented by the locals to incorporate additional elements of drama, vow-making and redeeming to the gods, and is known as nuotangxi (傩 堂 戏), lit. ‘nuo drama performed in the central room [of a household]’. Generally, contemporary nuo rituals in the north-east Guizhou are divided into two categories: chongnuo (冲 傩， exorcism) and huanyuan (还 愿， the making and redeeming the vows to the gods), and each of them encompasses three distinct ritual functions.Footnote ¹⁵ Apart from the two major rituals, there are various short rituals, such as the songchuan (送 船， to send a boat of evil spirits away), the gemen (隔 门， to keep the evil spirits away from the door of house), xietu (谢 土， to comfort the gods of the land), and so on.

Among the local religious rituals of affliction, nuo is the one that is most powerful, ceremonious, extensive and widely applicable. Nuo specialists are employed when the natural progression of the life cycle is disturbed, as in cases of sterility, dystocia (difficulties in childbirth), stunted growth, illness, accidents, natural disasters and unusual death. It involves varied and complex symbolic performances and encompasses and articulates with local worldview and cosmos comprehensively. Moreover, nuo ritual can be held with nuo drama performance, in which many relatives of the clients within the clan and kin group living in the host village and in neighbouring villages are invited to participate; also all the villagers, both within and outside the host village, are welcomed to join. Thus, nuo ritual performance provides a context for sociability and for the construction of a moral community among all its participants.

Prior to the early 1980s, however, nuo had remained largely unknown to the outside world, and this isolation is attributable mainly to the anti-religious climate in China at the time, as well as to the geographical isolation of the regions where nuo was practised. Since the institution of the Communist regime in China in 1949, religious activities had been actively discouraged by the Party-state, and although the Party-state attitude towards religion has relaxed somewhat with the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in 1976, nuo was still nevertheless categorized as a non-institutionalized and therefore illegal religion. Thus, the practice of nuo throughout this period was confined to small, semi-covert displays that were always kept hidden from the public. Adding to this political isolation, nuo had in modern times been largely concentrated in a mountainous region spanning across the borders of the Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Guizhou provinces, and the geographical remoteness of this area further insulated nuo from outside attention.

It was in this socio-political context that nuo was rediscovered by the local Dejiang county government, who judged it to be useful as a cultural marker of the highly Han-assimilated Tujia (土 家) ethnic minority, a decision that would dramatically alter the political status of the popular religion.

The process began in the early 1980s during the height of the ethnic identification project (minzu shibie 民 族 识 别), a time when the CCP prioritized the socio-economic development of ethnic minority areas in order to further its goals of national unification and political stability.

The Tujia and the Ethnic Identification Project

Like many ethnic minorities in China in the past, the Tujia in Dejiang were wary of declaring themselves as such for fear of either ethnic discrimination or refusal by the Han government to recognize their ethnic minority status.Footnote ¹⁶ Thus, it was not until the launch of an ethnic identification project in the 1950sFootnote ¹⁷ that the Tujia were officially classified as a single ethnic group. However, before all the Tujia could be identified the ethnic identification campaign was abruptly terminated by the events of the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1958 which attacked ‘ethnic rightists’ and various contemporary views on ethnic separatism (minzu fenlie, 民 族 分 裂).Footnote ¹⁸ This left large numbers of Tujia people inhabiting the region spanning the borders of Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Guizhou without an official ethnic classification, and subsequently most of these people retained their self-declared Han ethnic identity.

The ethnic minority situation in China changed dramatically in the post-Mao era with the introduction of preferential socio-economic policies for ethnic minorities by the Party-state such as higher birth quotas, sponsorship of ethnic schools and development projects, a lowering of university entrance requirements as well as important tax exemptionsFootnote ¹⁹. With ethnic minority status suddenly so closely linked with local socio-economic development, the re-claiming of ethnic minority status became a priority not only for ethnic minority people themselves (about 5 million have asked to return to their ethnic minority identity since 1982Footnote ²⁰) but also for their local governments. When these needs were reported to the CCP, the ethnic identification project, which had been on hold since 1957, was resumed in the early 1980sFootnote ²¹ and 2.6 million people had returned to their ethnic minority identities by 1990.Footnote ²² In Dejiang county, the Office of Ethnic Identification (shibieban 识 别 办), was established in 1983 especially for this purpose.

The Search for Cultural Markers of the Tujia

As the ethnic identification project in Dejiang progressed, it quickly became clear to the officials of the Ethnic Affairs Commission that many of the people trying to reclaim their ethnic minority status had been significantly assimilated by the Han, and consequently many of their traditional ethnic characteristics had been lost. This made it difficult for local officials to distinguish those locals of minority origin from those of Han origin, as the criteria used at the time to identify ethnic minorities were observable cultural markers, rather than the people's own self-ascribed perception of ethnic identity. In their search to find an unique cultural marker, the Dejiang officials initially turned to investigating people with an inhabitant surname, such as Tian (田), Zhang (张), An (安), Yang (杨) and Ran (冉), as those people were believed to be the descendants of the indigenous rulers of the Tujia (tusi 土 司)Footnote ²³ and to still retain some of the ethnic characteristics of the Tujia in their daily lives. Prominent examples of such characteristics include their language, which still contain words used by the ancient Tujia, their use of the traditional Tujia dress, and the fact that they celebrate the Chinese New Year one day earlier than usual, according to the Tujia custom.Footnote ²⁴

As the investigation continued, however, it further became apparent that large numbers of Tujia descendants possessed neither these ethnic characteristics nor an inhabitant surname, and subsequently the use of these cultural markers had to be dropped. This lack of reliable cultural markers made it impossible for Dejiang officials to convince higher ranking officials at the prefecture level of the legitimacy of Dejiang County's bid for minority status. As Jin Jiguang (金 吉 光), then in charge of the Office of Ethnic Identification in Dejiang recalls:

However, another Dejiang official, An Gaoke (安 高 科), then the Deputy Director of the Office of Ethnic Identification, disputes the apparent contradictions in Stalin's definitions as the real reason for the rejection of their proposal:

As the two counties were concerned only with the socio-economic benefits associated with ethnic minority status, and both knowingly used the ethnic cultural markers as the only legitimate means with which they could advance their cases before the prefecture authorities, Dejiang officials were determined to find that elusive cultural marker which could uniquely identify the Tujia and thereby force the prefecture authorities to approve their proposal. They took their search to the countryside and it was here that nuo was re-discovered.

Nuo's Uses as a Cultural Marker

The re-discovery of nuo caused much excitement amongst the Dejiang officials, as nuo was a common practice within the area but was rarely seen in contemporary Han areas. Thus, local officials firmly believed that nuo could be used as a major Tujia cultural marker by which the highly Han-assimilated Tujia within the county could be differentiated from the ‘real’ Han from outside the area. Echoing this view, local officials attributed the local people's belief in nuo to their consciousness of Tujia ethnic identity:

However, the ability of nuo to act as a unique cultural marker for the Tujia was severely limited by its mixed heritage. Long-term inter-cultural assimilation among the locals with multiple ethnic origins made nuo a representation of multiple cultural traditions, not only of Tujia, but of other ethnic groups. This mutual inter-cultural assimilation is not uncommon in ethnic minority areas in south-west China, and a case studied by Shih in Yongshun (永 顺) county within the Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Western Hunan, for example, suggests that the Tujia and Miao ethnic minorities in Yongshun have mixed with the Han in culturally indistinguishable ways.Footnote ²⁹ The decline of nuo during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and its subsequent re-location to ethnic minority areas in south-west China, led to nuo gradually acquiring many non-Han characteristics, and among the Tujia ethnic group such characteristics include the worship of the Tujia ancestors, nuogong (傩 公) and nuopo (傩 婆), vow-making and vow-redeeming to the gods, as well as the practice of re-counting stories of local history during nuo drama performances. However, nuo today still retains its core symbolism: exorcism, the enshrinement of the founders of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism as well as the incorporation of the history of Central China in its drama plays, which are all strictly in the Han tradition. An indication of the extent of the assimilation of nuo by various cultural traditions can be seen in the fact that there is no longer any discernable difference between nuo rituals performed by teams in different regions within Dejiang county. During my fieldwork I followed closely two different nuo performing teams, one claiming to be Tujia and the other claiming to be Han, and subsequently found them to be identical in organizational structure, ritual symbolism and execution of performances.

Thus, although nuo does encapsulate certain cultural characteristics of the Tujia, it is far from being the unique cultural marker that the Dejiang government could use to identify the Tujia from other locals: the nuo in Dejiang contained not only elements of Tujia culture, but also that of the Miao, Hui (回), Zhuang (壮) and even the local Han. Had the Dejiang government attempted to use nuo in the way they had originally intended, they would have been completely unable to distinguish the Tujia from these other local ethnic groups, with disastrous consequences for their bid for Tujia minority status.

The Dejiang government was well aware of the unsuitability of nuo as a unique ethnic cultural marker for the Tujia, but unwilling to abandon their bid for ethnic minority status, chose to misrepresent the situation to the prefecture authorities by positioning nuo as a suitable marker. The Dejiang government claimed that nuo can differentiate the highly Han-assimilated Tujia within the county from the ‘real’ Han outside, as the latter had ceased to practise the popular religion tradition several centuries ago. Used in this way, nuo constituted indisputable proof to the prefecture authorities that Dejiang did indeed contain a significant Tujia ethnic minority population with distinct cultural traditions from the ‘real’ Han. However, when carrying out the ethnic identification, the Dejiang government shunned the use of nuo as a cultural marker of Tujia ethnic minority in order to prevent the confusion caused by locals with different but culturally indistinguishable ethnic origins. In the end, the officials identified the Tujia within the county by using their originally conceived criteria such as surname and dress code, but with an important additional criterion, the length of residency: applicants were only allowed to reclaim their ethnic minority status if they had resided within the county for more than 270 years.

The additional requirement on the length of residency was not a trivial addition as it not only excluded recent migrants to the county, who it was believed would not be able to become local Tujia in so short a time, but it more importantly provided the Dejiang government with a mechanism to limit the number of successful applicants to what they believed would appear reasonable to their prefecture peers.Footnote ³⁰ Eventually it was claimed to the prefecture authorities that nuo had played a major role in the identification of the Tujia, and through this deliberate misrepresentation of nuo's role in the campaign Dejiang's bid for ethnic minority status was subsequently approved, transforming Dejiang county from a Han area with an ethnic minority population of 0.03 % into an ethnic minority area with an ethnic minority population of over 54 %.Footnote ³¹ Thirty-four townships within the county were subsequently granted the title of ‘Tujia ethnic minority township’ and received preferential socio-economic policies normally reserved for autonomous minority counties.Footnote ³²

Contributions to Local Socio-Economic Development and the Political Stability of an Ethnic Minority Area

The role nuo had played in the ethnic identification campaign significantly altered its position in modern Chinese politics. As Herberer noted, the Chinese leadership has since 1987 openly admitted that there had been very few changes, if any, in the socio-economic conditions in minority regions up until the late 1970s, and that moreover the Cultural Revolution had brought severe oppression to many minority regions throughout the country. The long-term results of this dismal state of affairs were not only chronic economic and cultural backwardness in minority regions, but also a large measure of alienation between the Han and the various ethnic minorities.Footnote ³³ The seriousness of the situation eventually aroused the attention of the CCP, as Li Ruihuan (李 瑞 环), the member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of 15th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, recognized in his speech in the Forum of Personages of Various Circles of Ethnic Minority, ‘ethnic work is always a serious issue in our country, as it is closely associated with the unification and stability of the state, economic development, and the consolidation of state defence’.Footnote ³⁴ In order to address the issue of ethnic affairs, the Party-state created a set of preferential policies for ethnic minorities, but as the Party-state was well aware, the successful implementation of these policies is dependent on the success with which the various ethnic minorities could be identified. In the light of such emphasis on ethnic identification work by the CCP, the importance of nuo claimed by the Dejiang government in identifying the Tujia greatly elevated the position of the popular religion in the eyes of the CCP.

Moreover, socio-economic development has always been at the centre of the Party-state's strategy for the development of ethnic minorities in the post-Mao era. As Deng Xiaoping phrased it, ‘to judge a minority area is to mainly judge its socio-economic development’,Footnote ³⁵ further stressing that ‘the implementation of autonomy in an ethnic minority region would be an empty phrase if the local economy could not be developed’.Footnote ³⁶ Also, from an ideological view-point, the Party-state strategy has also emphasized socio-economic development for ethnic minorities, as is evident from the following explanation of Party-state strategy:

This strategy formed the ideological framework upon which the Party-state built its preferential policies for ethnic minorities and these policies, which came into effect in Dejiang county following its change to an ethnic minority region, allow Dejiang county and other such administrative regions to receive substantially more state funds for socio-economic development projects than Han regions of comparable size. Such regions also enjoy lower rates of taxation, and if the region is deemed especially poor, it then becomes entitled to receive additional financial aid in the form of a ‘Subsistence Fund for Poor Minority Areas’. In addition, the area is prioritized for the receiving of state loans, essential materials, and other goods.Footnote ³⁸ In accordance with these policies, Dejiang county has been allocated 467,000 RMB of extra state funds per annum, which has been used to improve local services and infrastructure such as the construction of roads, bridges, water conservation facilities as well as education and public health facilities.Footnote ³⁹

The role of nuo in consolidating the CCP's political control over ethnic minority areas and helping to implement the CCP's stated goals of directing ethnic socio-economic development has made nuo no longer politically opposite to the regime as a ‘feudalist superstition’ and oppressed, but consistent with Party-state's goal of constructing The Four ModernisationsFootnote ⁴⁰ in the new era and thereby openly supported by government officials. This led to the more intensive research cooperation between the Dejiang Nationality Affairs Committee and the Institute for Nationalities Studies, Guizhou Nationalities College, by which a completely new value of nuo was discovered and, as discussed below, nuo's situation was unexpectedly further changed in terms of its relationship with post-Mao's ideology and its cultural policies.

The Evolutionary Classification of Ethnic Minorities

One of the fundamental preoccupations of Chinese nuo studies has been the study of historical and evolutionary processes. Traditionally, the study of history in China has been undertaken to guide contemporary decision-making, and for centuries political leaders have been careful about keeping meticulous records of important events and daily life in their imperial state. This historical tradition in Chinese scholarship was strengthened to a great extent by Marxist perspectives after the communist revolution. In one of the branches of Marxist thought, evolutionary theory was used to explain a stage-by-stage process in the social development of society, which was seen to move from primitive communism, to slave society, to feudalism, to capitalism, and finally to the modern communist utopia. This approach, as Maurice Bloch rightly points out, ‘developed an evolutionary theory for political purposes’.Footnote ⁴¹ When Marx and Engels considered history and evolutionary processes, they were ‘interested in what led to the transformation of one social system into another, and in what led to the breakup of the past systems’.Footnote ⁴² Therefore, studies of history and evolution intended to ‘show how capitalism and its institutions have been produced by history and how they will therefore be destroyed by history’.Footnote ⁴³ Moreover, it aimed to ‘show how the beliefs and values which organize our society are produced by the history of the social formation’.Footnote ⁴⁴

In interpreting Marxist thinking, Chinese scholars saw it as a re-affirmation of the importance of historical reconstruction as a guide to current social processes. Thus, the Marxist evolutionary approach became a sacred doctrine dominating Chinese academic circles for about four decades. During this period, the notion was adopted that the development of human history proceeds everywhere in distinct stages, and since each of these stages consists of a complex of related cultural traits, it follows that peoples who display certain sorts of culture traits must be representative of the particular stage in which those traits occur.Footnote ⁴⁵ The adoption of this evolutionary theory of social development drove contemporary Chinese scholars to ‘attempt to apply Stalin's definition of the “nationality” and five-stage theory of social systems to Chinese social situation’,Footnote ⁴⁶ and this created a preoccupation with the evolutionary classification of ethnic minorities. As a result, much contemporary ethnographic evidence was distorted, in order that it might fit the various stages of social evolution defined by the evolutionary framework.Footnote ⁴⁷ One of the examples mentioned by McKhann is the sexual relationship zouhun (走 婚, walking marriage) practised among the Mosuo in Yunnan province, in which different men may visit and stay overnight with a particular woman, but never co-habitat with the woman or share custody of any children that are born from the relationship, who are strictly raised in their mother's household. The zouhun is held to represent an evolutionary stage only slightly more advanced than that characterized by Morgan's hypothesized ‘consanguine family’—what Chinese authors call ‘group marriage’.Footnote ⁴⁸

The Transition from Religion to Culture

For above mentioned reasons one of the dominant approaches to the study of nuo has been the investigation of the origins and evolutionary processes of the tradition and its constituent elements. For these scholars nuo was a ‘living fossil’ of primitive culture,Footnote ⁴⁹ particularly ancient drama,Footnote ⁵⁰ and thereby worthy of preservation.Footnote ⁵¹ As Holm suggested, anyone who has read any of the increasingly voluminous literature from scholars in China on the subject of nuoxi (傩 戏, nuo drama) today will know that these forms of performance are usually described as ‘living fossils’ and their origins traced back to the nuo ritual of classical times.Footnote ⁵² For example, Professor Feng Qiyong (冯 其 庸), then the Vice President of the Academy of Chinese Arts commented:

Qu Liuyi (曲 六 乙), the Chairman of the Chinese Association for Nuo Drama Studies, defined three contemporary religious rituals found in Guizhou Province as nuo rituals and classified them from an evolutionary perspective with the conclusion that they represented three different stages of development in Chinese ancient religious dramas.Footnote ⁵⁴ Cao Yu (曹 禺), then Chairman of the Chinese Dramatist Association regarded nuo ritual, particularly its drama play, as capable of supplying many of the missing pieces of evidence in the evolutionary process of Chinese drama and therefore concluded that: ‘The history of Chinese drama should be re-written’.Footnote ⁵⁵

What all these works had in common was a distinct emphasis on the value of nuo as a living representation of ancient Chinese culture, and that as such nuo can aid scholars in reconstructing the history of Chinese culture. These works do not take into account, however, the constant re-invention of nuo over time, to the extent that nuo as it is practised by ethnic minorities today is greatly different from that practised by the Han people of the past.

In ancient times, nuo was strictly a rite of exorcism that was characterized by singing and dancing, as well as the wearing of masks representing the gods, who were believed to be able to drive away evil spirits with their supernatural powers.Footnote ⁵⁶ This form of nuo ritual began to change, however, first during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD) when additional drama elements were introduced, and then again during the Ming and Qing Dynasties following the decline of nuo and its subsequent re-location from central China into ethnic minority areas in the south-west. The assimilation and re-invention of nuo by different ethnic minorities led to a major branching in its development and created a set of distinct forms of the popular religion.Footnote ⁵⁷ In north-east Guizhou where Dejiang county is situated, for example, the common local religious practise of vow making and redeeming to a pair of ancient ancestors became incorporated into local nuo rituals, which consequently became a combination of exorcism, drama play and vow-making and redeeming to the gods, known as chongnuo huanyuan (冲 傩 还 愿) today. Moreover, the re-invention of nuo continues in contemporary China: for example, the nuo drama Gansheng Gankao (甘 生 赶 考) was recreated by adding various episodes drawn from local people's contemporary lives. These new episodes reflect the local people's concerns about the marriage crises caused by the recent wave of migration as well as expressing their criticism of the issue.Footnote ⁵⁸

As such a living and dynamic religion, nuo could never serve as the ‘living fossil’ of primitive culture by which past cultural traditions may be re-constructed. However, the focus on the cultural aspects of nuo and the wide-scale recognition accorded to these works by Chinese academics at the time shifted the focus of studies on nuo from its roots as a form of religion to its manifestation in culture. The term ‘nuo culture’ was coined by Tao Lifan (陶 立 璠) in his article ‘A Preliminary Study on Nuo Culture’ published in 1987, in which he justifies his use of the term by pointing to nuo's cultural values in history, folklore, history and epistemology.Footnote ⁵⁹ This view gained the acceptance and endorsement of Chinese academics through a number of books emphasizing the cultural aspect of nuo,Footnote ⁶⁰ and also through organisations such as the Chinese Association for Nuo Drama Studies (Zhongguo Nuoxi Xuehui 中 国 傩 戏 学 会), established in 1988 for the purposes of promoting nuo culture. In 1993 the Department of Culture of Guizhou provincial government officially granted Dejiang County the title ‘Hometown of Nuo Drama’ (Nuoxi Zhixiang 傩 戏 之 乡), again highlighting the cultural aspect of nuo. Moreover, exhibitions on nuo culture were held twice between 1987 and 1990 in the capital Beijing in which nuo masks, books, tools, and paintings were displayed and some excerpts of nuo drama were performed.

A Religion to Support the Official Atheist Marxist Ideology

The most important consequence of this change of focus on nuo from its religious to its cultural aspects was that the only major opposition from Party-state's official ideology had now been removed, for post-Mao ideologues make it clear that religion is an inseparable part of culture. As Luo Zhufeng writes in his book Religion under Socialism in China:

When religion is viewed as a cultural phenomenon, as Fenggang Yang puts it, ‘its ideological incorrectness becomes unimportant and its scientific incorrectness obscure, eliminating two key criticisms of religion by the militant and scientific atheisms respectively’.Footnote ⁶²

In the case of nuo, not only has the new view of the religion eliminated its two key criticisms, but it has now placed the religion in a position where it can be viewed as supporting the official atheist Marxist ideology. As a ‘living fossil’ of primitive culture, it provides evidence for the evolutionary theory of society and thereby supports the legitimacy of the CCP's regime by offering a rational explanation for its existence. Since imperial times, popular religion has invariably stood opposed to the official ideology of Confucianism. Although Confucianism and the heavily Confucianism-influenced imperial ideology have never advocated a state of atheism,Footnote ⁶³ popular religion has previously at best been tolerated by governments that were only too aware of its opposition to their official ideology and as a potential source of rebellion against the state.Footnote ⁶⁴ This chief antagonism has only grown deeper with the rise of the CCP and its Marxist ideology. In more recent times popular religion had been banned and labelled ‘feudalist poisonous weeds’ during the Cultural Revolution, and even after China initiated its ‘open door’ policy in the late 1970s, popular religion remained a non-institutionalized and therefore illegal form of religion.Footnote ⁶⁵

In a complete reversal of their historical positions here, it is Party-state ideology that grants nuo its right to exist. This helps nuo sustain criticism from Communist ideologues and gain open encouragement of high-ranking authorities. Since nuo became a ‘living fossil’ of ancient culture, no one has ever mentioned its remaining elements of ‘feudalist superstition’ and nuo has been given the highly prestigious title of ‘invaluable treasure of national culture’, a transition that has elevated its status considerably. This newly-acquired enthusiasm for nuo is most striking when it is seen coming from high-ranking officials, who have since then turned out in great numbers to attend various nuo exhibitions and opening ceremonies. For example, during the late 1980s and early 1990s the Vice-Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Yang Jingren (杨 静 仁), cut the ribbon in the opening ceremony of the Exhibition on Guizhou's National and Folk Nuo Mask.Footnote ⁶⁶ Similarly, when the Tongren Nuo Performing Team visited Shenzhen, many high-ranking Party officials were present at the display, including the Premier of the State Council, Li Peng (李 鹏), his deputy Tian Jiyun (田 纪 云), and the Deputy Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's National Congress, Ji Pengfei (姬 鹏 飞).Footnote ⁶⁷

Such unprecedented endorsement of a popular religion from the upper echelons of central government is not only attributed to the change of focus on nuo from its religious to its cultural aspects, but more importantly, the position it places where it can be viewed as supporting the official atheist Marxist ideology. However, it should be stressed that such role-change does not necessarily ensure that nuo is completely shielded from political suppression. The CCP's longstanding fear of any religious organization or activity that it does not control forces all forms of religion to fit state-defined criteria and avoid ‘politics’.Footnote ⁶⁸Nuo practitioners, as the case of Zouping's Christians studied by Kipnis, have never undertaken any explicitly political activities as Fa Lun Gong practitioners did.Footnote ⁶⁹ For local governments, focusing on the cultural aspects of the popular religion of nuo is socio-economically, rather than politically, important as it will open the door for the commercial exploitation of nuo as a local cultural attraction targeting both tourists and investors (zhaoshang yinzi 招 商 引 资).Footnote ⁷⁰ The preoccupation of local governments with local socio-economic development has helped many popular religions such as nuo maintain an ‘apolitical image’.Footnote ⁷¹